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Taylor Swift conspiracy theories owe more to misogyny than the Illuminati

Jocelyn Goh Shu Ting
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Taylor Swift conspiracy theories owe more to misogyny than the Illuminati

It’s 2017, the weather is swelteringly hot, secondary school has just started, and two 13-year-old girls are sat side by side in a rowdy classroom discussing a seemingly very serious matter. My best friend and I are exchanging conspiracy theories. Having just made friends not too long ago, we were stoked when we discovered a common interest in conspiracy theories.

I had been fairly new to conspiracy theories, and any and all conspiracy theories caught my attention. Cherryl, my best friend and partner in crime, on the other hand, had been into the conspiracy theory scene for a while now. When she encountered a YouTube video covering a conspiracy theory involving Taylor Swift, she clicked on it, thinking I would love to hear about it.

Who would want to hear a conspiracy theory about a celebrity they love? Well, me. I didn’t (and admittedly still don’t, despite being a huge Swiftie) keep up with Taylor Swift much apart from her music releases. Hearing conspiracy theories about her was intriguing as much as it was amusing. Cherryl, on the other hand, was and remains a non-Swiftie (although I did drag her to the Eras Tour with me). She had clicked on the video out of pure boredom, and because she knew of my love for conspiracy theories and Taylor Swift.

The 2009 MTV Video Music Awards had been going strong until Taylor Swift was awarded the Best Female Video award. Things took an awkward turn when Kanye West interrupted her acceptance speech and proclaimed that Beyoncé should’ve won, instead.

According to YouTube, this was no random act – things had been perfectly set up for Kanye West to jump up on stage and steal the show from Taylor Swift. After all, he had been given a front seat with no guards stationed in front of the stage, giving him convenient access as he pleased.

Who could have set this up? Certainly not MTV, as former producer Jim Cantiello explained, because staging the incident even as a skit since could have potentially strained relations between the three biggest artists of 2009 (Kaufman, 2019).

Among the crowd of shocked and aghast faces, one person in particular stands out. Dubbed “Queen Bey” by her fans, According to the YouTuber, Beyoncé is one of the leaders of the Illuminati. Think about it: Beyonce and her husband, Jay Z, seem to be living on a whole different plane of success, opulence, and power. Plus Beyoncé occasionally flashes a hand symbol that makes a triangle, which is often associated with the “Eye of Providence”, in turn often linked to the Illuminati.

Historically, this Eye of Providence originated as a Christian symbol (Wilson, 2022). The three points of the triangle symbolise the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) with the eye representing the Christian God. The Illuminati were inspired by Freemasonry, which had occasionally incorporated the Eye of Providence as a symbol of God – as seen alongside many other churches at the time. As such, the Eye of Providence became a symbol for the Illuminati.

Beyoncé often employs religious symbols and acts in her creative direction. Her 2017 Grammys outfit incorporated intricate gold pieces and a gold halo crown to frame her as a goddess. This gave conspiracy theorists more fuel to stoke the flames, suggesting Beyoncé was one of the supreme leaders of the Illuminati.

Beyonce dressed in a gold dress with a gold starburst like tiara and gold jewellery. The light is very ethereal and a woman stands in the darkness beside her with her arms raised.
Beyoncé’s Grammys 2017 outfit, depicting her as a goddess (Rosa, 2017 – used under fair dealing for analysis)

The conspiracy theory YouTube video also talked about this as an “entrance exam” that people looking to be inducted into the Illuminati had to undergo, involving public humiliation. These humiliation rituals are done (not just by the Illuminati… if they actually existed) to emphasise stark differences between social status (Origgi, 2021). Passing the hazing process entails internalising the shame, feeling humiliated, and accepting the loss of social status.

If this was a hazing process by the Illuminati towards Taylor Swift, who was 19 at that point of time, she took the humiliation like a champ. After Kanye West handed the microphone back to Taylor Swift, she stood in silence holding back tears. Of course, the torrent of tears came gushing out backstage, but in the public moment, Taylor Swift had accepted her humiliation and her loss of public status immediately, as demonstrated by her lack of retaliation to Kanye West’s intervention.

Taylor was scheduled to perform in the following portion of the event. Drying her face and plastering a smile onto her face, she performed her song “You Belong With Me” with no hesitations (although with a shakier few last notes). “Also, she changed into this red dress for her live performance. She wore this same red dress for her next appearance on stage,” Cherryl recounts from the video.

Beyoncé would then go on to win Video of the Year Award for “Single Ladies” where she was invited on stage in a beautiful red number. During her acceptance speech (which, thankfully, no one interrupted), she invited Taylor Swift back onto stage to continue her unfinished acceptance speech from before.

Beyonce in a red dress with ruffles and a deep v neckline. Her hair is wavy. Next to her is a photo of Taylor Swift with wavy hair and a strapless red dress with a sweetheart neckline.
Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, both dressed in red following the VMA humiliation (Cohen, 2020 – used under fair dealing for analysis)

Both celebrities are looking gorgeous in their red dresses. But was it a coincidence that both were wearing red after the incident? As the YouTube conspiracy theorist explained, red is especially significant as it holds a hidden meaning of power and influence (Melling, 2019). Taylor Swift had started in a sparkly silver dress but, after her humiliation, she had made the switch to a red dress – of all colours she could’ve chosen from. This could be to symbolise how she was knighted and accepted into the Illuminati by Queen Bey herself, having passed the initiation process.

Conspiracists have long since rumoured that the Illuminati grants people fame, power, influence, and whatever they wish, as long as they are willing to give up something precious to them in exchange for the wish. It is alleged that Kanye West sacrificed a family member in exchange for fame. There are rumours that Katy Perry and Lady Gaga sold their souls to the devil in exchange for unparalleled fame and fortune. Now, similar rumours trail behind Taylor Swift, that she gained her fame through selling her soul… rather than by her own hard work and talent.

It also does not help that Taylor Swift appears to love the number “13”, and makes an effort to incorporate it into her career. It appears in the number of songs in an album, album release dates, and “easter eggs” in her music videos.

Additionally, conspiracy theorists spread the rumour that Taylor Swift is a clone of former satanic leader Zeena LaVey due to their uncanny resemblance to each other. Zeena LaVey is an American visual artist and musician, and the daughter of the founder of the Church of Satan; she was High Priestess of the church from 1985 to 1990.

Photographs of two women side by side. On the left is Taylor Swift, on the right is Zeena LaVey. Both women are fair skinned white women. They both have thin eyebrows, a lightly smokey eye make up look, dark red lipstick highlighting plump lips. The photos are both taken at a slight side angle and both women have similar facial expressions. They both have wavey hair, though Taylor's is more defined and Zeena's is more bouffant.
Zeena LaVey, right, and her alleged clone Taylor Swift (Ishler, 2016 – used under fair dealing for analysis)

When I asked my best friend what it was about this 2009’s VMA theory that she had been intrigued by, her answer was reassuring. It was the “sheer absurdity of the theory” that “brought her much entertainment and made her laugh”.

Initially, back in 2017, Cherryl and I did not believe a single word of this theory, but over time it began to appeal more to us. Taylor Swift’s boom in success in her career after that incident certainly didn’t seem too much like a coincidence – she released hit after hit album following the 2009 VMAs, escalating her career in the music industry, becoming one of the world’s most spoken-about artists. Thus, our 13-year-old selves concluded that the theory must be true, and Taylor Swift had gained her extraordinary fame as a result of Beyoncé accepting her into the Illuminati.

However, now that we’re both older and have developed some critical thinking abilities, we can both confidently state that we do not believe that Taylor Swift is a member of the Illuminati. “From what I’ve seen about Taylor Swift online”, Cherryl told me recently, “it’s kinda obvious that her fame is well-deserved and all as a result of her own hard work.”

Outside of the conspiracy theory, the real story of the VMAs is far more understandable. According to Billboard, both Taylor Swift and Beyoncé were crying behind the scenes after the incident (Kaufman, 2019). Why would Beyoncé be crying if she were one of the supreme leaders of the Illuminati and had clearly set up the whole incident to test Taylor Swift? Moreover, Beyoncé was actually prompted by producers before her own award was presented to hand the show back to Taylor Swift to continue her interrupted acceptance speech.

And perhaps Kanye West being seated in the front row with no bodyguards stationed nearby was more of an oversight by MTV than the setup of an initiation ritual. Kanye West had been drinking that night, as seen by paparazzi pictures of him holding a Hennessy bottle. Alongside his history of egotistically jumping on stage, it’s really not all that surprising that interrupted Taylor Swift’s moment of glory.

And while there’s not much to be read into Taylor Swift’s costume change, given how frequent costume changes are at awards ceremonies, we can be in little doubt that this conspiracy theory is just a conspiracy theory.

Taylor Swift’s sheer tenacity and creative prowess has got her to where she is now – one of the most successful musical artists of all time. These conspiracy theories often target female celebrities in a bid to rob them of the ownership of their own hard work, resilience, and determination to succeed. Taylor Swift’s success can be fully attributed to her top-tier and unique songwriting skills, her brilliant and borderline terrifying attention to detail, the relatability of her songs, and much more – not to a secret and powerful organisation who has bestowed success upon her.

Alongside this ridiculous theory about Taylor Swift being part of the Illuminati, there are also myriad other conspiracy theories that are equally wide of the mark, the latest being that she is a secret Government Agent to help Biden win the 2024 Presidential Election.

These conspiracy theories are often rooted in underlying misogyny – while similar rumours exist about male celebrities selling their soul in exchange for fame, the issue of whether they deserve their fame is not brought up as often as in relation to female celebrities. For example, Lil Uzi Vert, a rapper who has alluded to having sold his soul to the devil and other outlandish claims, is not subjected to the same scrutiny as to whether his talent is authentic.

Now, Taylor Swift is revelling in her well-earned position as one of the best music artists of all time while Kanye West is… somewhere trying to revive his declining career. Despite the incident (and not to mention multiple other horrific interactions between Kanye West and Taylor Swift), it’s safe to say that Taylor Swift has the last laugh.

References

Is the ultra-processed food fear simply the next big nutritional moral panic?

Alice Howarth
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Is the ultra-processed food fear simply the next big nutritional moral panic?

Last weekend, I went to the UK Athletics Championships in Manchester, which means I spent the whole day watching elite athletes doing a range of activities from jumping (high, long, over hurdles or with a pole), to throwing heavy things like javelins, discuses, hammers and shotputs, and running at a variety of speeds across a range of distances. It also means I spent the majority of the day snacking – pre-prepared sandwiches, Babybel cheeses, those little vegetarian scotch eggs, and fondant fancy cakes.

If you watch the women’s javelin on BBC iPlayer from the Saturday morning, you’ll probably spot me eating. And if you’ve been paying any attention to half the UK media over the last year or two, you might be completely aghast at that snacking range, given that they were things that would be classified as Ultra-Processed Food.

Ultra-processed food has been having a MOMENT these last few years. We’ve seen headlines like,

  • “Ultra-processed foods need tobacco-style warnings, says scientist” from The Guardian
  • “Ultra-processed foods are killing millions – here’s how to avoid them” from The Independent
  • “Ultra-processed foods should be banned in schools and hospitals to stop them ‘pushing aside’ more nutritious alternatives, leading researcher says” from The Daily Mail
  • and “Ultra-processed food linked to 32 harmful effects to health, review finds” from The Guardian again.

Even the religious have got in on the act, with an article from PremierChristianity.com headlined “Your body is a temple. So should you join the war on Ultra Processed Food?”, which concludes:

“Even if the arguments do contain some inaccuracies and over-simplification, there’s a prevailing sense that UPF isn’t just bad for the body, but also the soul.”

So I know what you’re asking yourself – what is this demon food that has Christians and the mainstream media alike fearing for my eternal soul, and why are we only starting to hear about it now?

What are ultra-processed foods, or UPFs?

The idea of ultra-processed foods isn’t entirely new – the concept was first described in 2009 by a researcher and his team from Sao Paulo, Carlos Monteiro. In an article published in Public Health Nutrition he outlined three types of food. Group one included minimally-processed foods, or “whole foods that have been submitted to some process that does not substantially alter the nutritional properties of the original foods which remain recognisable as such, while aiming to preserve them and make them more accessible, convenient, sometimes safer, and more palatable.” The kind of processing group one foods might have undergone includes things like cleaning or cutting, and pre-cooking.

Then we have group two, which are “substances extracted from whole foods. These include oils, fats, flours, pastas, starches and sugars… Traditionally they are ingredients used in the domestic preparation and cooking of dishes mainly made up of fresh and minimally processed foods.”

Finally, according to Monteiro, we have the third group of foods: ultra-processed foods. “These are made up from group 2 substances to which either no or relatively small amounts of minimally processed foods from group 1 are added, plus salt and other preservatives, and often also cosmetic additives – flavours and colours.” This category includes breads, biscuits, crisps, and cereal, plus meat products like chicken nuggets or hot dogs.

Monteiro’s is not the only definition of ultra-processed foods currently in use. In 2019, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations put together a document titled “Ultra-processed foods, diet quality, and health using the NOVA classification system”. Carlos Monteiro was actually one of the authors of this document. It defines four categories of food: Unprocessed and minimally processed foods, Processed culinary ingredients, Processed foods and Ultra-processed foods. It says:

“Some common ultra-processed products are carbonated soft drinks; sweet, fatty or salty packaged snacks; candies (confectionery); mass produced packaged breads and buns, cookies (biscuits), pastries, cakes and cake mixes; margarine and other spreads; sweetened breakfast ‘cereals’ and fruit yoghurt and ‘energy’ drinks; pre-prepared meat, cheese, pasta and pizza dishes; poultry and fish ‘nuggets’ and ‘sticks’; sausages, burgers, hot dogs and other reconstituted meat products; powdered and packaged ‘instant’ soups, noodles and desserts; baby formula; and many other types of product.”

An array of breakfast foods and white crockery laid out in a large spread with coffee, spreads etc.
Bread? Sausage? Spread? Yoghurt? Cereal? Jam? UPF. Image by Elenildo Ferreira Artpix Comunicação visual from Pixabay

Its definition for what constitutes an ultra-processed food is very long and very technical, but it includes the following:

“Formulations of ingredients, mostly of exclusive industrial use, made by a series of industrial processes, many requiring sophisticated equipment and technology (hence ‘ultra-processed’). Processes used to make ultra-processed foods include the fractioning of whole foods into substances, chemical modifications of these substances, assembly of unmodified and modified food substances using industrial techniques such as extrusion, moulding and pre-frying; use of additives at various stages of manufacture whose functions include making the final product palatable or hyper-palatable; and sophisticated packaging, usually with plastic and other synthetic materials…

“Ingredients include sugar, oils or fats, or salt, generally in combination, and substances that are sources of energy and nutrients that are of no or rare culinary use such as high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated or interesterified oils, and protein isolates; classes of additives whose function is to make the final product palatable or more appealing such as flavours, flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, and sweeteners, thickeners, and anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, foaming, gelling, and glazing agents; and additives that prolong product duration, protect original properties or prevent proliferation of microorganisms.”

Meanwhile, the UK Food Standards Authority, says of UPFs:

“There is no single, universally agreed definition for ultra-processed foods. The NOVA classification (which is the most commonly used) talks about food which contains “formulations of ingredients, mostly of exclusive industrial use, typically created by a series of industrial techniques and processes.”

This is a problem – it is very hard to study something that you can’t adequately define. It’s even harder to communicate risk to the public when even experts struggle to define the topic. What’s more, oversimplification really doesn’t help.

A common meme highlights all of the many chemicals contained within an apple - all of them naturally occurring
A meme highlighting the many chemicals contained in an apple – all of them naturally occurring

Food is complex. There is nothing simple about anything we eat. We’ve all seen the meme showing the list of chemicals that we find in the humble apple – chemicals that occur naturally, to be clear.

I’d like to be able to tell you that nobody is claiming apples are unhealthy, but in our social climate with its dizzying array of comments and opinions around nutrition, “health”, body size and diet, there are definitely people who will tell you eating fruit is unhealthy. But not even those people can deny that an apple is a whole, unprocessed (or minimally processed, if you include washing) thing you can eat.

What constitutes ‘processing’?

Processing food is also complex. Taking that apple and cutting it into slices is processing. Taking those apple slices and coating them in lemon juice to prevent browning is adding a preservative – processing. Each step is a process, but our apple is still there.

One of our great evolutionary leaps can be attributed to our ability to process foods. In a National Geographic article on the evolution of the human diet, Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham argued:

“…the biggest revolution in the human diet came not when we started to eat meat but when we learned to cook. Our human ancestors who began cooking sometime between 1.8 million and 400,000 years ago probably had more children who thrived, Wrangham says. Pounding and heating food “predigests” it, so our guts spend less energy breaking it down, absorb more than if the food were raw, and thus extract more fuel for our brains.”

Even those who warn about the dangers of ultra-processed foods recognise that ultra-processing isn’t simply about super modern industrial processing of foods. That document from The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN explains:

“Not all ultra-processed foods are recent or new. The first such products created and enabled by mass industrialisation, some commonly consumed for generations, include packaged cookies (biscuits), preserves (jams); sauces, meat, yeast and other extracts; ice-cream, chocolates, packaged candies (confectionery); margarines; and infant formulas.”

The science on UPFs

So what does the science say? There have been a couple of high-profile studies reported recently that suggest ultra-processed foods are linked to poorer health outcomes, though there are some significant concerns with some of those studies. Eating a diet high in ultra-processed foods is probably linked to some poorer health outcomes, but the studies don’t adequately control for other causes.

One such cause is poverty – we know that poverty is associated with poor health outcomes, and we also know that people living in poverty are more likely to eat UPFs. There are many reasons for this. It might be because they’re working multiple jobs and just don’t have time to cook a meal from scratch – ready meals are ultra-processed, but they are also often packed with a range of macronutrients (carbs, protein, fat, vegetables), and are quick to prepare.

It might be to do with associated costs – cooking from scratch requires a kitchen, a fridge and/or freezer (plus the electricity to run it) to store ingredients, a microwave/oven/hob/air fryer plus the power to run them, pots and pans and other cooking utensils, the main ingredients themselves, plus any other ingredients needed for the cooking process, like oil. Only some people in poverty have access to all of those things.

It might be due to disability, which makes chopping, standing to stir a pot or bending to put something in the oven difficult. Or it might simply be because they’re feeding multiple kids with different food preferences and don’t have the energy to make eating healthy food over palatable food the battle of that day. Or they might be a carer and spend all their energy preparing a meal that their dependent is able to eat and then don’t have the energy or appetite to cook something for themselves.

People in poverty often rely on – or in some cases, resort to – ultra-processed foods, and demonising or banning those foods (as some of those headlines and ‘experts’ suggest) is not the solution to that problem. Solutions to that problem are challenging and require policy, welfare and structural change. Telling individuals that UPFs are bad for them will only make them feel worse about choices they have little to no control over.

Four shelves of cans and jars of food available in a food bank, labelled as soup, beans, tomatoes, pasta sauce, vegetables etc. The donation month is written on each item in marker pen.
Image of items in a food bank at the Cornerstone Community Centre in Newcastle-under-Lyme, UK. Image by Staffs Live, via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Another potential reason ultra-processed foods might be linked to poorer health outcomes is their levels of energy-dense ingredients, which are high in calories but low in nutrients. This isn’t in and of itself a bad thing, but if we are regularly consuming energy-dense foods, we can find ourselves getting hungry quicker, and eating more of those foods to feel sated. This can lead to a high intake of certain types of food. Balance is key when it comes to diet, so over-reliance on one type of food can increase our risk of poor health outcomes. It is easier to inadvertently eat a large proportion of energy-dense foods when consuming ultra-processed foods. None of this has anything to do with how many processes the food has undergone along the way.

In fact, a study published last year titled “Dietary Guidelines Meet NOVA: Developing a Menu for A Healthy Dietary Pattern Using Ultra-Processed Foods” showed that is entirely possible to develop a menu where over 90% of the calories come from UPFs but the overall diet has “a high diet quality score, and contain adequate amounts of most macro- and micronutrients,” with a healthy eating index score of 86/100.

The science is currently far from settled. We don’t have good evidence that any negative findings around ultra-processed foods are actually due to the fact that the foods had been “ultra processed”, rather than other confounding factors, and even if they were to prove that UPFs were the issues, we would still have no idea what the culprit might be. Meanwhile, we wade through daily headlines in which UPFs are demonised – far before there’s evidence to justify such negative press around an entire group of foods.

We have to be careful here, especially in the communication around the proportional level of fear the public should have. Should we be telling the public that we shouldn’t bake our own bread at home, because after all, yeast is ultra processed? Or, given that infant formula is classified as UPF, should we be discouraging bottle feeding and instead bringing back wet nurses? The panicked headlines need to be put into context and need to be led by the evidence, not by fear.

Fearmongering and food anxiety

The fearmongering is what worries me most about the constant discussion around ultra-processed food. There is absolutely no escaping it. It’s already leading some people to experience serious food anxiety. Just take a look at Reddit’s r/UltraProcessedFood, which has 23,000 followers, and is filled with people sharing labels of individual food items to ask if they are ‘safe’ to eat.

One Reddit user explains that they used to drink fruit cordial, but then they found out that it’s ultra processed, so now they’re adding whole fruit to their water… but now they’re worried that they’re consuming too much sugar by doing this. Another asks whether passata (pureed, strained fresh tomatoes) is ultra processed, because it contains citric acid – a chemical found naturally in all citrus fruits. Another person asks “I use this [canola oil spray] every day to make a large omelet. How screwed am I?” Fortunately, most of these threads have some responses from people reassuring those users that their anxiety around food is more dangerous than the food item itself – but it illustrates how much fearmongering can affect people’s experience of nourishing their body.

Not everyone listens to those reassuring voices. Orthorexia nervosa (ON) was first described in the late 90s, which the Association of UK Dieticians defines as an eating disorder where:

“the individual has a rigid and fixed obsession with ‘healthy eating’. This can include fixation on ‘pure’ foods, omitting ‘bad’ foods and an inflexible belief over the expectations and importance of healthy eating. Commonly, those with ON omit things that are ‘unnatural’, ‘processed’ or that have been processed in ways which are believed to reduce the beneficial health properties of the product.”

Symptoms include:

“an enduring worry and a pre-occupation with eating impure or unhealthy foods and what effect these would have on the body if the individual were to eat them; spending excessive time periods thinking, researching, writing or talking about food; excessive time preparing or acquiring foods which can also lead to financial difficulties due to the types of food being bought; inflexibility or intolerance to other people’s diets and beliefs about food and eating; and feelings of guilt and shame when perceived ‘unhealthy’ foods are eaten. These food-related behaviours can also lead to malnutrition due to the imbalance of the diet consumed and also difficulties with activities of daily living such as education, socialisation or work.”

While there currently isn’t a clinical consensus as to whether orthorexia is a new type of eating disorder, or whether it is a different kind of presentation of an existing disorder (such as anorexia nervosa), it is still clear that there are symptoms related to anxiety around eating certain types of foods that’s having a damaging impact on people.

That’s not to suggest that we should avoid all discussion of health foods in order to protect people whose relationship with food is influenced by a medical condition, but it does mean we have to ask ourselves whether demonising foods is a good idea when it comes to supporting a healthy relationship with food and health in our society. Encouraging restriction of certain food types can lead to increased consumption or even episodes of bingeing on those foods, and food and body shame can influence the types of food a person eats – often not in a positive way.

What can we do?

The evidence around UPFs currently isn’t settled. We see an association with outcomes of poor health and consumption of ultra-processed foods, but the cause of this relationship is a long way from being identified. Some researchers claim it’s related to particular additives like emulsifiers and gelling agents, and the good news is, we have a great mechanism for testing claims like that.

In the UK, the Food Standards Agency reviews all new research on food additives, and regulates them. All additives currently available on the market, including those in UPFs, have already been assessed based on the current evidence. The FSA says:

“All food additives must pass a robust assessment to check they are safe for people to eat. An assessment looks at the toxicological profile of a particular additive, its concentration in particular foods, the range of foods in which it is used, and how much we might be exposed to it in our overall diet. We then use that evidence to judge whether the additive is safe, in what quantity, and how it can be used in different products. When new information comes to light about the safety of a particular additive, we will reassess its safety if necessary, based on the latest scientific evidence.”

So I invite those researchers, who think food additives are the issue here, to bring their evidence and prove it. Once we’ve got the science, the FSA can and will regulate the use of those additives.

Ultimately, I think it’s important that we continue to research a wide range of different food types and how they influence our health, but the key thing is to use this research to influence how food manufacturers are regulated, and how food policy is considered.

We absolutely should not be using that research to drive sensationalised headlines, which give people yet more food to feel anxious and guilty about.

Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation

Edzard Ernst
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Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation

We all know that homeopathy is a placebo therapy: its assumptions fly in the face of science, its remedies are normally devoid of active ingredients, and the evidence from clinical trials is uniformly negative. After the UK and France, now even Germany, homeopathy’s home country, agrees with this position. The 128th ‘German Medical Assembly’ recently declared that:

“the use of homeopathy … is not an option that is compatible with rational medicine, the requirement for the best possible treatment and an appropriate understanding of medical responsibility and medical ethics”.

But such arguments fail to deter homeopaths. They argue that there are plenty of clinical trials of homeopathy that arrived at positive conclusions. And to be fair, they are not even entirely wrong. There have been several studies that did imply that homeopathy works beyond placebo.  

How come? Why do some studies of homeopathy show positive results? The obvious answer is because these studies are not rigorous; they are not randomised, or not double blind, or not placebo-controlled, for instance. But this assumption might also not be entirely true.

In 2020, Frass et al published a trial that seemed to prove it wrong. This randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind study showed that the quality of life of cancer patients improved significantly with homeopathy compared to placebo. In addition, survival was significantly longer in the homeopathy group versus placebo and control.

When it was first published, this study was celebrated by homeopaths, while it raised many skeptics’ eyebrows. The trial seemed rigorous, was published in a highly reputed journal, and was conducted by well-known experts. Its lead author, Michael Frass, was a respected professor at the Vienna Medical School (the institution to which I too once belonged).

When I first read his paper, I was nevertheless suspicious, not least because I had previously found that Frass (whom I have never met in person) had published no less than 12 studies of homeopathy all of which arrived at positive conclusions. This had long led me to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with Frass’ research.

I was therefore not surprised that, soon after the publication of Frass’ new trial, an in-depth analysis by Norbert Aust and Viktor Weisshäupl disclosed several important inconsistencies. They eventually prompted complaints to both the journal, Oncologist, and the Vienna Medical School about suspected scientific misconduct. The Medical School then referred the case to the Austrian Agency for Scientific Integrity. The agency took their time, but recently, more that 3 years after the Frass study was published, they made available the final on-line summary of their assessment; here is my translation of part of this document:

After establishing sufficient suspicion of various violations of good scientific practice, the Commission declared itself responsible and initiated proceedings. In the course of this, the principal investigator was given the opportunity to submit a written statement and to provide the Commission for Research Integrity Annual Report 2022 material that would help to clarify the facts of the case, which the accused submitted in large quantities.

In a very complex, comprehensive investigation, which required, among other things, the on-site inspection of original documents, the Commission was able to substantiate the suspicion of data falsification, fabrication and manipulation. In a final statement, the study director, who no longer works for the university in question, and the numerous co-authors were informed in detail about the course and results of the commission’s investigation and informed of the recommendations to the university and journal. 

The Commission recommended that the university concerned should consider investigating its own responsibilities and act accordingly, and that the publication should be withdrawn as a matter of urgency. The journal responsible for the publication was asked to withdraw the publication on the basis of the findings of the investigation.

Unfortunately, the scandal does not end here. Despite the Agency’s urgent call to the journal to withdraw the fabricated study, this has still not happened. Merely an ‘expression of concern’ has been added to the paper on Medline. It has been up for many months and reads as follows:

This is an Expression of Concern regarding: Michael Frass, Peter Lechleitner, Christa Gründling, Claudia Pirker, Erwin Grasmuk-Siegl, Julian Domayer, Maximilian Hochmair, Katharina Gaertner, Cornelia Duscheck, Ilse Muchitsch, Christine Marosi, Michael Schumacher, Sabine Zöchbauer-Müller, Raj K. Manchanda, Andrea Schrott, Otto Burghuber, Homeopathic Treatment as an Add-On Therapy May Improve Quality of Life and Prolong Survival in Patients with Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: A Prospective, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled, Double-Blind, Three-Arm, Multicenter Study, The Oncologist, Volume 25, Issue 12, December 2020, Pages e1930–e1955, https://doi.org/10.1002/onco.13548

In August 2022, the journal editors received credible information from the Austrian Agency for Research Integrity about potential data falsification and data manipulation in this article. While The Oncologist editorial team investigates and communicates with the corresponding author, the editors are publishing this Expression of Concern to alert readers that, pending the outcome and review of a full investigation, the research results presented may not be reliable.

Consequently vulnerable cancer patients might still be misled by the fake findings of Frass and colleagues.

The sorry story of Frass and his research illustrates some of the fundamental problems with research into homeopathy in particular, and alternative medicine in general. Sadly, scientific fraud is not uncommon in medicine. In conventional medicine, financial interests are often the driving force. This situation is very different in the field of alternative medicine, where ideological conflicts dominate.

To put it into a nutshell: researchers in this field tend to initiate studies primarily because they want to prove that their favourite therapy is effective. By not honestly testing their hypotheses, but dishonestly trying to prove them, they abuse research. This enables people like Frass to publish one positive result for homeopathy after another. On my blog, I summarise this growing group of people in the satirically named ‘ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE HALL OF FAME‘. It currently includes 24 (pseudo)scientists, 6 of whom specialise in researching homeopathy.

This could all be quite amusing but, of course, it is also very serious. Scientific fraud causes considerable damage. In the case of the Frass study, we even have to ask ourselves how many people’s lives it has shortened. Therefore, we should look for ways to minimise this phenomenon.

This would certainly not be an easy task, and there is no patent remedy for achieving it. In the field of alternative medicine, I have long advocated that researchers like Michael Frass, who produce nothing but implausible results that mislead us all, should be barred from receiving public research funding. This, one might hope, would stop at least some of the chronically deluded pseudoscientists of alternative medicine.

This is a revised and extended version of an article published in the Skeptical Inquirer, Data Falsification, Fabrication, and Manipulation by a Prominent Homeopath.

How many young people deny the Holocaust? The truth might actually surprise you

Michael Marshall
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How many young people deny the Holocaust? The truth might actually surprise you

Holocaust denial – the belief that one of the most heinous human atrocities in history never actually happened – is unquestionably pseudoscientific. Any amount of Holocaust revisionism in society is a grave cause for concern, which is why it is little surprise that a report from the Economist in December 2023 garnered so much attention. “One in five young Americans thinks the Holocaust is a myth”, read the headline. “Our new poll makes alarming reading,” came the subtitle.

The finding was reported in newspapers and media outlets the world over, including The Telegraph, The Hill, and The Times of Israel. The Daily Mail covered it, on the 10th December.

One in five young Americans believes the Holocaust is a myth – while another 30% say they are unsure if the genocide ever took place, poll finds

The Mail covered the story again two days later, complete with eye-catching bar charts to illustrate the clear and stark generational divide when it comes to Holocaust denial.

The Daily Mail's charts illustrating holocaust denial across American demographics, reproduced here for analysis under fair dealing. The chart shows that 20% of people aged 18-29 either 'strongly agree' or 'tend to agree' with the statement "The Holocaust is a myth". While only 8%, 2% and 0% of people aged 30-44, 45-64 or 65+ respectively feel similarly.
The Daily Mail’s charts illustrating holocaust denial across American demographics, reproduced here for analysis under fair dealing

The report came at an incredibly heightened time, in the wake of worldwide protests against Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza – a war which began in response to the October 7th terrorist attack by Hamas, but has escalated into widespread destruction, devastation, and the killing of an estimated 37,000 civilians. None of that death, of course, is on the hands of Jewish people outside of the leadership of Israel, countless thousands of whom have marched in solidarity with the people of Gaza with a view to stopping the war.

The notion that a fifth of young people believe the Holocaust to be a myth is obviously concerning, and it’s not the only concerning finding from the Economist’s study. The same research found that 24% of people think it is not antisemitic to claim that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than the US – despite allegations of dual loyalty being a long-standing antisemitic trope.

Additionally, the report found that while 9% of people think the Holocaust was exaggerated, that number rises to 23% among those under 30, with 28% of that group also believing Jews have “too much power in America”, and 31% saying Israel has too much control over global affairs.

The Economist and YouGov

This research was part of a regular feature by the Economist, where they collaborate with research company YouGov to take the temperature of the nation. YouGov being the responsible polling company that it is, made that survey data fully available, which means it can be scrutinised… and that’s where we start to get the sense that something doesn’t add up.

While YouGov and the Economist found that 20% of under 30s said they felt the Holocaust was a myth, the same research found that Biden voters were twice as likely to believe this as Trump voters, and that Democrats were twice as likely to believe it than Republicans, which seems surprising given what we know about the current Trump iteration of the Republican party and its acceptance of conspiracy theories like Pizzagate, QAnon, the Hunter Biden Laptop, and more. It’s not impossible that a party that’s taken wholesale to its core scaremongering about George Soros somehow rejected Holocaust denial at a greater rate than the rest of the American political landscape, but it seems surprising at least.

The YouGov study was conducted between the 2nd to the 5th December, with the Economist story running two days after the poll closed. It was an online poll conducted via YouGov’s website and app, with a representative sample of panellists drawn from their opt-in panel. Anyone can be part of YouGov’s opt-in panel, they simply need to create an account online, and each day they’re given access to a range of surveys to complete. To incentivise participation, panellists are given points upon completing each survey, and once they reach 25,000 points they can cash them out for a $15 Amazon gift card. According to some reports, each survey earns a few hundred points, though it is not always clear before taking a survey how long it will take to answer, and how many points it will earn.

These are standard practices in the online polling world, but they’re also potential weaknesses. For one, a high cash-out threshold means it is likely that many participants will spend hours taking surveys only to never reach the point where they can recoup their reward. As part of my research into online polling methodology and its impact on the media (formerly homed at badpr.co.uk), I have taken part in hundreds of such online surveys, but have successfully cashed out only once.

This high threshold for reward comes with an attendant risk: users are therefore incentivised to take as many surveys as they can in order to reach the cash out level, inevitably watering down their interest and investment in giving reflective, thoughtful answers. This is not the only way in which users are incentivised to prioritise speed over accuracy.

Perverse polling incentives

The Economist’s weekly poll requires a threshold of 1,500 respondents. This is not an atypical figure – often such polls will look to survey under 2,000 people before reporting on their findings. However, typically points are rewarded to the first 1,500 respondents to complete a survey, not the first 1,500 people to open a survey. It is often the case that respondents can be halfway through completing an online poll, only to be told that the survey is now closed, as the respondent limit has been reached (it was a regular experience among the hundreds of such polls I have taken).

Practically, therefore, the micropayment structure incentivises participants to take as many surveys as they have access to, and then to answer those surveys as quickly as possible. Those who spend an hour really considering their responses and ensuring they’re accurate and reflective of their views will come away with zero points, while those who speed through with little-to-no care will get paid.

In the case of this Economist/YouGov poll, the survey was 66 questions long. That’s a lot of questions. On top of that, many of the questions were multi-part questions (real example: “How would you rate the president listed below?”, with five names, each of whom had to be answered separately). The questions about the Holocaust and antisemitism came after 107 questions had been asked, and came in the form of a 12-part question. There were 141 questions in total in this survey.

Now, bear in mind that the whole time a respondent is answering, the clock is ticking. If they pause and really consider their opinions, they could end up investing an hour into really answering this survey, only for 1,500 other people to spend five minutes clicking the first box they see; the speedsters get paid, and the thoughtful respondent gets nothing. Clearly, the incentive is to answer quickly, thinking very little about it, speed through, click click click oops you just denied the Holocaust. Notably, as best as I can tell, “The Holocaust is a myth” was the first part of this 12-part question, and “Strongly Agree” would have been the first box to check.

Maybe not everyone who admitted to being a holocaust denier were these thoughtless speedsters, but it is easy to see how it could be a real factor. Fortunately, a few errant clicks in a population of 1,500 might not have a particularly big effect, but once you break the results down by category, you might amplify the potential impact of any mis-clicks or thoughtless clicks. These results were analysed nine different ways: by gender, race, age, income bracket, voter status, 2020 presidential vote, political party, political ideology and residential category (eg Urban, Suburb, Rural). The more different ways the data gets cut, the more chance of finding an outlier result (and, in less ethical surveys, the more bites you get at getting at finding a juicy headline).

Of the 1,500 people to take part in this survey, just 206 were from the under 30 age bracket – the age group that made the headlines. 20% of those 206 people said the Holocaust was a myth. These international headlines were based on the apparent views of just 41 people. How many of those were people who were speedily clicking through to earn a small number of points, and so clicked the first box they saw, which was that they “strongly agreed” with the Holocaust being a myth? Also, given the lack of definitions in the question, how many of them were unsure what the term ‘myth’ meant (when, for example, ‘lie’ would have been unambiguous)?

In my opinion, the Economist ought to have suspected that these data were not accurate. There were warning signs elsewhere in the same survey: looking at the question “How much discrimination do the following people face in America today?”, for the age group 18-29, only 12% said Jews were not discriminated against at all. This feels an uneasy fit with 20% of that demographic being Holocaust deniers. More to the point, to the question “Do you think it is  antisemitic to deny that the Holocaust happened?”, 17% said it was not antisemitic. So, 3% apparently admitted that they were being antisemitic in their Holocaust denial beliefs?

Later in the same poll, in response to questions about abortion, 44% of respondents said abortion should be illegal, or only legal when the life of the mother is in danger. That’s a notable increase on other polls, which usually has abortion opposition closer to 35%. However, when breaking that down by age, those under 30 were the group most likely to oppose abortion, at 48%.  For comparison, other polls have abortion opposition in the under 30s at just 26%.

These numbers ought to have been viewed as obvious outliers, and should never have been the main subject of an article in a mainstream magazine without verification and follow-up. This should be straightforward to understand: if your sub group analysis comes up with an eye-catching result in one of more than 100 things you’ve measured, with a very small sample size, you don’t shout it from the rooftops until you replicate it in a more focused and reliable study.

To the Economist’s credit, they did eventually update their story, adding a note at the start:

Editor’s note (27th March, 2024): After this article was published, the Pew Research Centre conducted a study on this topic. It found that young respondents in opt-in online polls such as YouGov’s were far more likely to say the Holocaust was a myth than were those surveyed by other methods, and that in general, young and Hispanic participants in such polls are unusually prone to providing “bogus” answers that do not reflect their true views.

Pew’s investigation and replication

That Pew follow-up study is highly informative. Titled: “Online opt-in polls can produce misleading results, especially for young people and Hispanic adults”, it points out that when it comes to opt-in surveys, just as I’ve been arguing for more than a decade, people will click through surveys very quickly without thinking about their results, especially if there’s a micropayment incentive at the end of it.

More specifically, Pew explained:

this type of overreporting tends to be especially concentrated in estimates for adults under 30, as well as Hispanic adults. Bogus respondents may be identifying this way in order to bypass screening questions that might otherwise prevent them from receiving a reward, though the precise reasons are difficult to pin down.

Screening questions are a weakness that I’ve also been highlighting for more than a decade – when looking at the PR market research industry, I would give the example in lectures of the screening question: “Have you been on an airplane in the last six months?”. Clearly, such a survey is unlikely to be about the time you weren’t on an airplane. But, the incentives drive participants to take as many surveys as possible, in order to accumulate sufficient micropayments to cash out, so they find a way through the screening question, and in doing so pollute the end data.

Similarly, I wrote many years ago about a screening question I saw that asked “Do you have a child? And are they with you now?” Obviously this survey wasn’t asking that in order to find child-free people – it was (predictably) about children’s attitudes to playing outside, and its results made headlines across the news media, even though it was based on data that I know was unreliable. There’s also nothing stopping people registering with a second account, with a different demographic profile, because the you that’s a 25 year old Hispanic mother might have access to more surveys, and therefore have a better chance of you turning those points into cash.

By way of illustration of this principle, Pew included a question in one of their opt-in surveys in February 2022, asking people if they were licensed to operate a nuclear submarine. 12% of adults under 30 said yes to that question. If accurate, that would mean there were six million qualified nuclear submarine operators under the age of 30 in the US.

Pew also pointed to studies that highlighted this issue when it comes to other online surveys and their headline-grabbing findings, including when respondents reported having tried drinking bleach to protect them against COVID-19, or that they had a widespread and genuine belief in conspiracies like Pizzagate, or that they felt that violence was an acceptable response to political disagreements. You might have seen coverage of some or all of those findings at the time, but you probably didn’t realise they were based in flawed polling methodology and likely ‘bogus’ respondents.

So how many young adults really deny the Holocaust? In a follow-up study by Pew, specifically designed around that question, using a postal survey where it’s harder for people to lie about their identity and where they have less time pressure to answer, the results were… 3% of people. And, it turns out, that figure was the same across all age groups. That’s still not great, it still means 3 in every 100 people doubt the veracity of a historical event, but it’s not headline-worthy.

This kind of story is why I have always been so interested in market research data and opinion polling. Because while nobody really cares whether an online hookup site wants to lie about the attractiveness of Jeremy Clarkson, all of the flaws and errors and perverse incentives that lead to that story can be present in far more important stories like this one. And while it’s not that big of a deal that journalists at national titles uncritically reproduce press releases and findings from dodgy PR surveys about cleaning products and mattresses and confectionary, the pressures and failures that lead to them copy and pasting survey-based stories without ever really scrutinising them are just as present when it comes to stories where scrutiny really matters, because the implications are significant for society.

All of the failures that allow dubious data to flourish in the press are just as relevant for the stories that pass as real criticisms and descriptions of the society in which we live, where misinformation and unchecked assertions can have an impact on the real world. It’s not just about criticising marketing or media fluff pieces, it’s about having the tools to question the forces that construct a narrative, and shape our understanding of society.

The supernormal confronts the supernatural in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s prophetic new series

Ted Lefroy
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The supernormal confronts the supernatural in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s prophetic new series

On 19 May 2024, the Vatican released a new ruling on miracles. Since 1978, the veracity of visions and weeping statues has been determined by local dioceses, but that call now resides with the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, AKA The Inquisition. The intention is to disenchant the world. These novels by Karl Ove Knausgaard re-enchant the world, but not in a good way. Think Voldemort, rather than the Virgin Mary.

The Morning Star and The Wolves of Eternity are the first in Knausgaard’s new series, with The Third Realm out in English in October and The Night School published in Norwegian last October. The style reinforces Knausgaard’s reputation as a master of autofiction, the fourteen hundred pages of minutely observed interior lives over the two novels domesticating the supernatural. A bright new star that suddenly appears in the evening sky unsettles, but is quickly dismissed by television experts as a supernova. Then strange events occur, observed in the same dispassionate language Knausgaard uses to describe his characters frying fish fingers or brewing coffee, leaving their implications to the reader.

The theme is the quest for immortality, introduced through occasional conversations over a barbecue, a train journey, a bowl of porridge and the occasional essay by one of the characters. Six of the fourteen main characters in the two novels indulge in metaphysical speculation, the rest get on with their lives with their self-talk, shopping lists and personal secrets distracting from the inexplicable.

In Morning Star, talk of immortality is sprinkled with references to Genesis, Rilke, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard, while Wolves introduces Russian mystic Nicolai Fyodorov, who argued that immortality is not just possible, it is humanity’s task “…to resurrect all who have ever lived.” Silicon Valley entrepreneur and life extentionist Peter Thiel is mentioned as evidence that immortality has moved from religion to science, and both books quote this passage from Revelation:

“And in those days, men shall seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.”

As the star appears early in Morning Star, which takes place over two sweltering August days in present day Bergen, and at the end of Wolves, which covers 40 years to the present first in Norway then Russia, Wolves serves as a prequel. While the planet-sized star looms unexplained over Wolves, there is a hint in Morning Star as its arrival coincides with a satanic murder. A nod to 1990s Bergen, when black metal bands were burning churches and a member of the band Burzum (‘Darkness’ in the Black Speech of the Lord of the Rings) was convicted of murdering a Mayhem bandmate.

Hell on Earth

Near the end of Morning Star, Knausgaard ignores Nietzsche’s advice and the abyss stares right back. Jostein Lindland is a middle aged crime reporter, first to the murder scene, and soon after filing copy he passes out, wandering for 30 pages through a sparse post-apocalyptic world of mute zombies, lost relatives and mythical half humans pushing burning long boats adrift on the fjord.

Back on Earth, the metaphysical speculation continues in the form of an essay on death by one of the characters. Egil Stray is a scientifically sceptical, independently wealthy lapsed documentary maker and forty-something divorced son of a shipping magnate. After acknowledging that the origin of life could have been a random unplanned event, he goes on:

But the idea that death arose quite as haphazardly at the same time is something I have more difficulty believing. I can accept one random occurrence with consequences of that magnitude. But two, and at the same time? That smacks too much of a plan. And the doubt to which that suspicion gives rise gnaws at the very theory of evolution itself, which is unthinkable without death. 

Egil is one of several characters who rejects scientific materialism, questions Darwinian evolution or complains that science has stripped the world of mystery. What he doesn’t consider is that death is a side effect of life. That mortality is cellular, a consequence of the fact that natural selection is a form of problem solving on the run with neither plan nor capacity for forethought. Death is ultimately due to the accumulated errors of cell division, hastened by the inflammatory effects of oxygen rusting us from the inside, not the legacy of a single random event.

But since the discovery of stem cells and telomeres, errors in cell division can theoretically be overcome. The problem is not the feasibility of cellular reprogramming or anti-senescent therapies, it’s their ethical implications.

Transhumanism

In Knausgaard’s world, immortality arrives miraculously overnight. When no deaths are recorded in Norway after the star appears in Wolves, and an emergency department in Morning Star records vital signs in people with clearly fatal injuries, hell on Earth is just a matter of time. This thought experiment parallels the potential side effects of efforts by today’s hi-tech transhumanists to extend human life – the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs embracing the utopian fantasy of human perfectibility and ignoring three thousand years of cultural caution from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Mary Shelley.

Uneven access to gene-editing rejuvenation and brain implants opens the prospect of not just an uberclass but a new sub-species. And history suggests that the relationship between H sapiens cyberensis and H sapiens sapiens will be no more fair or friendly than H sapiens sapiens vs H sapiens neanderthalensis. Jostein’s dream populated with the unspeaking undead, resurrected ancestors and hybrid overlords presages the dark side of transhumanism.

Of course, the promise of Silicon Valley’s transhumanists is to benefit all of humanity, to float all boats. The catch is that governance of this technology is up to states that have, in recent times, done more to increase inequality than reduce it. Billions of central bank funds released to keep economies afloat between 2008 and 2022 flowed to the high returns of the tech sector where platforms replace markets, rents replace profit and free data replaces labour in a self-sustaining cycle that captures, modifies and monetises our attention with every post and every purchase.  

Knausgaard’s mastery of style immerses the reader in the intimate, mundane and unfulfilled lives of his characters and we sleepwalk with them into a new moral universe. Philosopher Daniel Dennett avoided immortality in April this year and, in one of his last publications, left us these words of warning:

Democracy depends on the informed (not misinformed) consent of the governed. By allowing the most economically and politically powerful people, corporations, and governments to control our attention, these systems will control us.

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Morning Star (Vintage 2022) and The Wolves of Eternity (Harvill Secker 2023) are available now.

Redemption or ruse? Russell Brand’s conversion to Christianity examined

Abigail Kennedy
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Redemption or ruse? Russell Brand’s conversion to Christianity examined

Comedian and actor, turned conspiracy theorist and content creator, Russell Brand recently made headlines for his conversion to Christianity and highly public baptism. His spiritual journey, which began with Buddhism, Hinduism, and New Age spirituality, recently culminated in his baptism by newfound friend and survival expert Bear Grylls in the River Thames on 30th April. In a viral TikTok video posted the day after, Brand described the experience as “incredibly profound” and “undertaken in gratitude and sincerity.” He stated, “I’ve been Christian for a month now, and it’s been a big change.”

Source: Russell Brand's instagram (used under fair dealing)

Brand’s conversion came months after a major investigation by Channel 4 and The Times into allegations made by multiple women. The alleged incidents, occurring between 2006 and 2013, include rape, sexual assault, and abusive and grooming behaviour. The Metropolitan The police have questioned Brand under caution as part of their investigation. He has consistently denied all accusations.

Brand responded to the scepticism about his authenticity by saying, “I recognise that anything in this terrain, in this social media world, could be exploited and utilised. For me, I have made the decision, and I’ve made it for myself, and I know what that decision is, and I’ve made it for myself.” Despite the controversy, this rhetoric has garnered him significant support online within the Christian community.

Journalists such as Krish Kandiah, writing for Premier Christianity, have compared Brand to Saul, the converted persecutor of Christians, to emphasise that God offers unconditional love and forgiveness. Similarly, Gavin Ashenden of the Catholic Herald expressed no surprise at Brand’s conversion, noting that Brand had been “at the bottom of the ethical ladder” and now found the concept of salvation personally attractive. Comments on his videos reflect this positive reception, with messages like “The ultimate glow up! You are truly glowing,” “Amen, welcome to the family in Christ, be blessed,” and “Congratulations!!! Welcome home!!”, as well as “God bless you” from rapper Stormzy.

However, scepticism persists within the Christian community regarding Brand’s continued promotion of New Age spirituality on his social media. For example, on 29th April, he promoted the divinatory uses of tarot cards, which many Christians would define as witchcraft. He has also not renounced his former spiritual ideas or practices. David Hoffman for The Christian Post argues that a Christian must “believe in the exclusivity of Christ and His unique divinity, the sinfulness of man, the need for salvation through the finished work of Jesus on the cross, repentance from sin, and total trust and faith in Jesus Christ.” Hoffman contends that Brand does not fully understand what it means to be a Christian and a follower of Jesus.

Personally, I do not take issue with Brand’s seeming missteps in practising Christianity, as even a “baby Christian,” as he calls himself, is still figuring out how to practise their faith. However, from an atheist perspective, I question the timing of his conversion and how his newfound faith has supported his framing of the allegations against him.

Brand suggests he turned to religion in response to what he perceives as a “coordinated media attack” aimed at silencing his criticism of mainstream media. He describes the allegations as an encounter with the presence of evil, which led him to a point “where the figure, the personage, the presence of Christ became overwhelming, unavoidable, welcome, [and] necessary.” In a brief response video released on YouTube on 15th September last year, Brand did not acknowledge that the accusations came from women he knew and had been sexually involved with. Instead, he dismissed them as part of a coordinated and fabricated attack by the “legacy media,” quickly labelling them as “another agenda at play.” He invoked arguments his channel has made for years about governmental control.

It is hard not to suspect that Brand’s years of building a channel dedicated to criticising the establishment and promoting ideas of a government-level conspiracy were perhaps in preparation for a time when accusations might surface against him. His rapid response to call on his supporters and frame the allegations as an attack on his freedom of speech supports this idea. His recent conversion to Christianity and the resulting media attention—highlighting his new friendship with Bear Grylls and his baptism—seem convenient. It appears to act as a smokescreen, diverting attention from the serious allegations made by the women who have spoken out against him.

Furthermore, Brand’s intentions behind his Christianity and anti-establishment content can be doubted, given his frequent promotion of the very systems of thought he claims to be spiritually above. For instance, in a TikTok video posted on 22nd May discussing Pentecost, he mentions “humanists, materialists, and atheists” together, then ends the video by asking for financial support for his channel. He claims, “commercialisation and consumerism [are] the default religions of our time.” He declares himself part of a spiritual movement away from modern values, criticising deteriorating value systems and institutions. However, none of his YouTube content is posted without a sponsored break, often for commercial products.

In the same video from 22nd May, he declares that “humanists, materialists, and atheists” only act based on a “hunch” that their actions are good, implying that without being “infused with the Holy Spirit,” it’s “impossible to access through rationality that good is real.” This reflects a common Christian argument that atheists, lacking higher guidance, do not know right from wrong. If his Christianity is genuine and he believes this, then his previous years before finding God make more sense. Therefore, if at forty-nine he has finally found guidance and a conscience, that is positive.

However, his evangelicalism seems disingenuous because it still lacks accountability and spreads persuasive hate, designed to encourage distrust in established organisations while urging his audience to trust him instead. His channel presents both the problem and the solution, suggesting that his intentions are not honourable.

For years, in his stand-up routines, Russell Brand has joked about being a manipulative liar. In 2013, he presented and toured his comedy show ‘Messiah Complex,’ where he concluded by saying, “I worship divine sexual female energy.” He then added, “I’m saying that not only because it’s true but also because it’s nearly the end of the show now, and I know that if I say stuff like that about women and divine sexual energy at the end of the evening, there’s no way I’m not getting laid after the show tonight.” In 2007, during his tour ‘Russell Brand: Doin’ Life,’ he joked, “I can pretend to be nice for a little bit of time at the beginning of a relationship, pretending to be quite nice.”

Open about his misleading techniques with women, he dismissed any inappropriate sexual behaviour as part of his character. His 2009 comments make clear that he knows saying the right thing to the right group will get him what he wants. While claiming that he does actually “worship divine sexual feminine energy,” he makes it clear that he knows how to manipulate those around him.

Whether Brand genuinely believes in Christ now and his baptism is authentic, we may never know. Either way, it is clear he knows how to say the right thing to the right people to get his way. True or not, Brand’s very public conversion seems calculated to intensify his already successful strategy to divert attention from the legitimacy of the allegations against him and to cement himself as a figure within a powerful and loyal social group.

His strategy appears to be successful, as his platform’s popularity and view count have dramatically increased, and he is now in the news for his religious conversion rather than the sexual misconduct allegations. However, the investigation into him is still ongoing, and his ploy may not last long. Soon, I hope he will be in the news again, but not on his terms.

Hotels and houseplants: why we should doubt Ellen Langer’s mind-over-matter miracles

Mike Hall
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Hotels and houseplants: why we should doubt Ellen Langer’s mind-over-matter miracles

In a previous article for The Skeptic from January 2022, we discussed a paper titled ‘Mind-set matters: exercise and the placebo effect,’ which proposed that merely believing their work was good exercise led to significant health improvements among hotel room attendants. This 2007 study has been widely cited, both within academia and popular science literature.

For the study, eighty-four female room attendants from seven Boston-area hotels were divided into two groups. One group was informed that their daily tasks met the Surgeon General’s recommendations for a healthy and active lifestyle, while the other group was not. Four weeks later, the informed group showed improved physiological markers, such as lower weight, BMI, body fat percentage, and blood pressure, apparently without any additional exercise or dietary changes. The study concluded that perceived exercise could result in physiological improvements.

There are good reasons to be skeptical of these conclusions, including the small sample size and loose controls. Most notably, an attempted replication in 2011 yielded no significant differences between the informed and control groups.

More recently, one of the authors of this paper, the Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, was interviewed for a podcast published by Freakonomics. During the interview, Langer spoke about the room attendant study, and it was disappointing that neither she nor the host, Steven Levitt, referenced the failed replication. However, references were made to several other studies Langer was involved in.

Langer’s most famous work is ‘Long Term Effects of a Control-Relevant Intervention with the Institutionalised Aged’, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1977. Ninety-one nursing home residents were split into two groups. One group was given a lecture about personal responsibility, and to illustrate this were each given a houseplant to look after. The other group were also given houseplants, but received no such lecture and were told the nursing staff would tend to the plants for them.

Image of a houseplant. Image by Leonardo Iheme from Pixabay.

After eighteen months, the study reported that participants who had cared for the houseplants were happier and more engaged, according to both self-reports and assessments from the resident nurses. But the key finding was that people who looked after houseplants had significantly lower mortality than those whose plants were watered for them.

As with the hotel room attendant study, there are serious issues with this work, not least the randomisation technique. Rather than randomising individuals, the randomisation was actually done by floor. So everyone on one floor was put into the intervention group and everyone on the other floor was in the control group. This was done ostensibly to prevent participants from chatting with their neighbours and discovering that other people were given a different protocol, but there could be significant confounders introduced by the choice to randomise by floor. Maybe residents on higher floors are more fit and well than the lower floors? That’s why they’re on the upper floors, they can get up the stairs. Maybe one floor is nicer, or cleaner. Maybe the windows open. Maybe they get more sunshine. Maybe the staff assigned to those floors are nicer, or better trained, or more diligent.

Similar randomisation issues were present in the hotel room attendant study. There too, participants were not randomised as individuals, but were randomised by hotel. So all the attendants in four of the hotels were put into one group, and all the attendants from the remaining three hotels were put into another group. The hotels were randomly assigned, but the participants were not. Again, this was done to avoid the housekeepers chatting amongst themselves and discovering they had been told different things, but does introduce an uncontrolled bias into the data.  It’s not inconceivable that something about one or more of the hotels could mean attendants working at those hotels engage in more or less exercise.

Besides randomisation, there are other problems with the houseplant study. The sample size is small, for example, with just ninety-one participants. But the major problem is that the calculations used to demonstrate the significance of this finding are just flat wrong. A year after the houseplant study was published, a short correction was issued:

The z-score should be changed from z = 3.14 to z = 1.73. The outcome is therefore only marginally significant and a more cautious interpretation of the mortality findings than originally given is necessary.

The z-score is a measure of how many standard deviations away from the mean a data point is. And the z-score in the original paper was incorrectly given as 3.14 – so over three standard deviations away. In the correction, they give a new score of 1.73. This is described as meaning the findings are ‘only marginally significant’, but actually the z-score puts these figures well outside of the accepted threshold for significance. These findings are what we would expect to see from random chance; there was no true effect on mortality.

Despite this, the original paper has been cited over 900 times, and the correction possibly as few as three. Disappointing too is the fact that, while the houseplant study is mentioned in Langer’s Freakonomics interview, the subsequent correction and revelation that this was not a statistically significant effect was not brought up.

Another famous study of Langer’s is the so-called ‘Counterclockwise’ study. Two small groups of elderly men – in their 70s or 80s – were taken to a retreat, which was meticulously set up to resemble 1959. This experiment was done in 1979, so 1959 was twenty years earlier at the time.

They were surrounded by technology, newspapers, and music from the 1950s. One group was encouraged to reminisce about their lives in the 50s, but the other was encouraged not to simply reminisce but also to behave as if it really were 1959. They should speak about 1959 in the present tense, and they were asked to write autobiographies about their lives in the 50s, in the present tense.

This experiment supposedly found that the participants who behaved as if it were 1959 showed improved hearing, memory, dexterity, and even took on a younger appearance. Surprisingly, this widely-cited and influential work was never published in a peer-reviewed journal. The findings were instead reported in Langer’s 2009 book ‘Counterclockwise’. Despite the intriguing results, this study was never peer-reviewed or replicated. In 2019, a protocol for a replication was published, but at the time of writing the results are still pending.

Another Langer study, this one from 2016, claimed that time perception influenced blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes. Forty-seven participants were randomised into three groups: Fast, Normal, and Slow. Those in the Normal group were put into a room where they were asked to play simple video games. Blood glucose levels were measured before they started playing, and again after ninety minutes.

Patients in the Slow group were asked to do the same, but in this case the clock in the room was rigged to run at half-speed. When their blood was taken after ninety minutes, they believed they had only been playing for forty-five. The Fast group did the same thing, but with their clock rigged to run at double speed, so when their blood was taken they believed they had been playing for three hours.

The results appear to show that patients’ blood glucose levels dropped in response to perceived time, not actual time. Patients in the Slow group, who believed only forty-five minutes had passed, had a much smaller decrease in blood glucose than those in the Normal or Fast groups, which had larger decreases.

Unfortunately, there are several of the same confounding factors we have seen in Langer’s other work. There is a very small sample size; forty-seven participants split over three groups. Such small numbers mean that just one or two outliers could skew the results one way or the other. The paper also indicates the participants were blinded, but doesn’t say if the researchers were. Presumably not, otherwise this would have been mentioned.

Hands holding a video game controller. Image by Anton Porsche from Pixabay.

Another possible confounder is stress, with one group feeling like they had been there for an eternity, and the other surprised their task is whizzing by. Stress modifies blood glucose, and the relative differences in stress across the three groups could plausibly account for the effect seen. There are efforts in the protocol to control for this, by asking the participants if they’re feeling stressed, which they say that they’re not. But they don’t look for biomarkers of stress, like serum cortisol levels, which may have told a different story.

If this is a true effect, there is surely some intermediate factor accounting for this, rather than the biologically implausible claim that glucose metabolism is directly driven by time perception. No independent replication has been published.

Another time perception study by Langer was published in Nature in 2023. Thirty-three participants were given standardised bruises by applying suction to their skin. They were then split, as before, into Fast, Normal, and Slow groups. The study claims that wound healing aligned with perceived time rather than true clock time. However, the same methodological issues remain, such as small sample size and lack of blinding.

There are also reasonable questions about how much a bruise would be expected to heal over the course of twenty-eight minutes; the true clock duration of this study. The healing assessments in this case were done by a combination of self-reports, and non-expert assessment using a crowd-sourcing platform. Like the blood glucose study, this effect has not been replicated – though in fairness it was published only a few months ago.

Her proposed study would have 24 women with Stage 4 breast cancer… encouraged to behave as if it were 2003, as if they did not have cancer, with the environment around them designed to reinforce that. After a week, measurements would be taken to see if their tumours had shrunk

Perhaps of even greater concern is the work Langer has not published. In an interview for the New York Times in 2014, Langer spoke about applying her ‘Counterclockwise’ method to cancer patients. Her proposed study would have twenty-four women with Stage 4 breast cancer taken to a private resort in Mexico, outfitted to resemble 2003. The women would be encouraged to behave as if it were 2003, as if they did not have cancer, with the environment around them designed to reinforce that. After a week, measurements would be taken to see if their tumours had shrunk, and to check for other biological markers of cancer.

I don’t know if this study ever went ahead. According to the New York Times, the study was set to commence in spring of 2015 – but at the time of writing no results have been published.

Other unpublished studies include one in which Langer claims to have found that breast cancer survivors who describe themselves as ‘in remission’ showed poorer health than those who described themselves as ‘cured’. Another study, described as being ‘in progress’ in the New York Times interview, asks if mindfulness can stem the progression of prostate cancer.

While Langer’s work has been influential and is often cited, there are significant concerns about the validity of her findings. Spurious effects stemming from statistical errors, and sensational findings that either aren’t replicated or fail to replicate. Biologically implausible results without clear mechanisms, loose controls, and very small sample sizes. As ground-breaking as this work appears to be, we should approach any such findings with skepticism, at least until they are consistently validated and independently replicated using more robust methodology.

Toby Young’s Daily Sceptic and Free Speech Union are no allies of critical thinkers

Michael Marshall
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Toby Young’s Daily Sceptic and Free Speech Union are no allies of critical thinkers

Free speech, and where (if anywhere) there should be limits on free speech, is a subject that skeptics spend a lot of time thinking about. It’s a subject that seems straightforward on the surface, but gets more complicated the more time you spend genuinely thinking it through.

At the simplest level, there are those who say that we all have a right to free speech, and nobody’s right to that should ever be infringed upon. But such an absolutist position rarely holds up to scrutiny. Do we have the right to make false statements during financial transactions? We all accept that we do not have that right – we call that ‘fraud’, and we’re all happy to accept that our free speech doesn’t give us the right to commit fraud.

What about the right to yell racial slurs at people, do we have a free speech right to do that? Most, though not all of us, would concede that we don’t – that’s hate speech and discrimination. What about the right to make unwanted sexual remarks at people? Again, most – though definitely not all – will recognise that there’s a line there, and that crossing that line strays from free speech into sexual harassment. People will disagree over where that line lies – because some will feel that anything unwanted is by definition wrong, and others will try to excuse behaviours with defences like “deep down, they’re fine with it” and “well, how is anyone meant to flirt these days, it’s PC gone mad”. But most of us agree that there is a line there.

And of course, we have the defence of comedy: well, it’s only a joke, can’t you take a joke, we have to be able to joke about everything, after all, it’s a comedian’s job to push boundaries, even if people get offended by it. Though, when one of those comedians is criticised, inevitably they and their legion of diehard fans react with immediate and visceral offence – because, while they tell you it’s OK to joke about anything, in practice what they mean is it’s fine to joke about everything other than the thing they care about. Or to put it another way, when comedians fill their Netflix specials with cheap barbs at the expense of marginalised people, they’re not pushing boundaries, they’re showing you which targets they don’t care about.

The more emotive and sensitive the subject, the more skill is required to write jokes about it… if you try juggling knives when you haven’t the skill to do it, you can’t complain when you cut yourself.

Personally, for what it’s worth, I do think it’s important that comedians have the freedom to joke about anything at all, it’s just that the more emotive and sensitive the subject, the more skill is required to write jokes about it. If you’re juggling balls and clubs, you don’t have to be very skilful to pull it off, but if you try juggling knives when you haven’t the skill to do it, you can’t complain when you cut yourself.

I’m someone who cares a lot about the need for free speech, but I am also deeply suspicious of people who claim to be free speech absolutists, as often they are either people who subscribe glibly to a position they haven’t fully thought through, or they are very aware that what they mean is the freedom to say things that they personally agree with. And with that in mind, I want to consider Toby Young’s Free Speech Union.

Toby Young’s version of scepticism

The Free Speech Union describes itself as a non-partisan, mass membership public interest body that stands up for speech rights. And according to their website, they “champion the right of people from all walks of life to express themselves without fear of punishment or persecution”.

And these sound like noble goals and the kind that, on the face of it, any skeptic should be happy to endorse. It is also why science charity Sense About Science decided it a worthwhile endeavour to partner with the Free Speech Union to put on a series of lectures on the topic of science and free speech, culminating in May 2024’s event “Science Under Pressure — Restoring Public Confidence”, a conversation between the director of Sense About Science, Tracey Brown, and the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Toby Young.

This, to me, seemed extraordinarily misguided. While the event blurb promised to help the audience understand how to “public distinguish between relevant expertise and those who merely have strong opinions and loud voices”, in my opinion (and I’m not alone), Toby Young is one of those loud-voiced, strongly opinionated people whose output undermines public confidence in science.

As well as being the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Young is the founder and editor of the website “Lockdown Sceptics”, latterly rebadged as “Daily Sceptic”, which has been spreading misinformation about the pandemic since 2020, including articles from authors such Clare Craig, Mike Yeadon, and more.

The Daily Sceptic has been nothing but fulsome in its praise for Andrew Bridgen MP, the former-Tory-MP-turned-conspiracy-theorist, whose work sowing mistrust and dubious vaccine statistics in parliament has been dissected in The Skeptic previously. However, to the Daily Sceptic, Bridgen is treated as a brave and important whistleblower who should be celebrated, and defended, especially from the unfair ‘attacks’ of fact checkers or those who accuse him of antisemitism.

Official portrait of Andrew Bridgen MP, wearing a blue suit and burgundy tie with a white shirt. From Wikimedia commons.
An official portrait photograph of Andrew Bridgen MP. Via Wikimedia Commons

Daily Sceptic authors have uncritically reproduced a full transcript of his error-strewn parliamentary addresses on multiple occasions. In at least those latter instances, Toby Young shared the articles from his Daily Sceptic to his Twitter account so, even if he were to claim he did not fully endorse them, he ought at least to be aware of them.

A misleading approach to Covid statistics is also common at the Daily Sceptic, including an article that, even as recently as January 2024, continues to misunderstand or misrepresent the purpose of the Yellow Card scheme for reporting medical side effects. The article, jointly penned by Dr Carl Henegan and Dr Tom Jefferson, claims that the Yellow Card data shows there have been 2,546 deaths linked to the Covid vaccine – but, crucially, it misses the context that the data is not designed to claim causation, just to cast as broad a net as possible to help identify patterns.

The authors include the note:

The MHRA considers its previous estimates of underreporting (that only 10% of serious reactions are reported) should not be used as indicators of the reporting rate for COVID-19 vaccines, as it considers there is high public awareness of the Yellow Card scheme. There is no evidence of this heightened awareness, and it is plausible, given the previous estimate, that the number of suspected adverse reactions could be 10-fold higher than the number reported.

This, again, is highly misleading – medical side effects to common medications are often under-reported, possibly even to the level specified here… but that is far more often true of very trivial side effects. Headaches, sore arms, and mild fatigue are all side effects of vaccination that plenty of people will experience, but few will ever report them. So most of those trivial side effects may be entirely missing from the Yellow Card data (although, less so in the case of the Covid vaccine, because of the elevated public conversation around the potential for side effects).

However, if people were regularly dropping dead as a direct result of their vaccination, it’s incredibly unlikely that their death would go unreported – especially at a time when medical professionals were actively looking for any indication of unforeseen dangers. It is how the rare blood clotting issues caused by the Johnson & Johnson vaccine were quickly discovered and the use of the vaccine limited to reduce the chance of issues arising.

That the article in the Daily Sceptic missed, misunderstood, or misrepresented the purpose of the Yellow Card Scheme suggests a serious oversight by the authors and editors.

Elsewhere, in the article “Are We Being Gaslit Over the Cause of the Princess of Wales’s Cancer?”, we are led to question whether it’s rather unusual that both Kate Middleton and her father in law have cancer at the same time, and therefore whether the cause might be… the Covid vaccine:

That the Daily Sceptic missed, misunderstood, or misrepresented the purpose of the Yellow Card Scheme suggests a serious oversight by the authors and editors.

“What is for certain is that – for whatever reason – King Charles and Princess Catherine are in a growing group of previously healthy people being diagnosed with cancer…

“If you want to look at some primary source material, search for “vaccine induced cancer” and “vaccine induced T cell suppression” – you’ll probably have to search for it on Rumble and other platforms like that.”

That post is written by Melissa Kite, who it is worth pointing out, is also a colleague of Young’s at the Spectator – where Young is listed as Associate Editor.

The Daily Climate Sceptic

Covid is not the only important issue that the Daily Sceptic spreads misinformation about – Young’s daily dose of scepticism includes a heavy dose of climate change denialism, including headlines like:

Each of those stories – and, in fact, a deluge of others – are based on reports, statements or experts provided by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the climate denialist charity which The Skeptic named as the winners of the 2022 Rusty Razor award for pseudoscience.

The Daily Sceptic’s reliance upon the GWPF (latterly rebranded to “Net Zero watch”) as its most frequent source for climate change contrarianism appears to be something of a sore spot for Young. Back in April, naturalist and climate activist Chris Packham appeared on a BBC news programme and pointed out the evidence that demonstrates the reality of climate change, saying (according to an account Young himself published in the Spectator):

‘It doesn’t come from Toby Young’s Daily Septic [sic], which is basically put together by a bunch of professionals with close affiliations to the fossil fuel industry… It comes from something called science.’ 

Young took great exception to this characterisation, complaining to the BBC and accusing Packham of a “smear” that was “false and defamatory”. As a result of complaints, including that by noted free speech advocate Toby Young, the BBC removed recordings of the programme in question.

Packham’s assertion was false: there is no evidence that the Daily Sceptic is a well-financed front of the fossil fuel industry… the reality appears to be that the Daily Sceptic are uncritical in their reproduction of GWPF material because they genuinely believe in it.

In fairness to Toby Young, Packham’s assertion was false: there is no evidence that the Daily Sceptic is a well-financed front of the fossil fuel industry, and its articles are not put together by professionals who have close ties to that industry.

However, it remains true that the Daily Sceptic have published scores, if not hundreds, of articles whose central arguments have the effect of undermining public confidence in the reality of climate change, based on reports issued by a climate denialist charity dogged by allegations of association with the fossil fuel industry.

It is possible to argue that Packham was being charitable to the Daily Sceptic in assuming that the publication would only so enthusiastically parrot the talking points of a climate denialist organisation if it was being paid to do so, whereas the reality appears to be that the Daily Sceptic is uncritical in its reproduction of GWPF material because it genuinely believes in it.

A ‘sceptic’ by any other name

I first came across the Daily Sceptic in Telegram groups related to the White Rose antivax movement, which continues to enthusiastically share and approve of the work of Young’s team. However, a search among those same groups for mentions of the Free Speech Union shows the sentiment is far less positive – as best as I can tell, these antivax, conspiracist spaces actively dislike the FSU. Yet it’s hard to argue that there is a substantial difference between the positions of the Free Speech Union and those of the Daily Sceptic; indeed, why would there be, when both organisations have clear overlaps in terms of writers, directors, and editors?

But, with different brands comes the ability to be different things to different audiences… which brings us back to those “restoring public confidence in science” conversations, in partnership with Sense About Science. Sense About Science and their supporters might recognise the problematic positions of the Daily Sceptic, but when it comes to the Free Speech Union, who could possibly be against free speech?

The SENSE about SCIENCE logo, which has several overlapping coloured ring lines on the left side in a hand drawn style.
Sense About Science‘s logo.

It is possible to argue that, despite the misinformed scientific positions endorsed by Young’s Daily Sceptic, the mission of the Free Speech Union is still one worth supporting, because they are a “non-partisan membership public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of people from all walks of life”. That it is not a case of left or right, nor a case of science or pseudoscience; their goal is to protect the free speech of all, regardless of viewpoint.

It certainly isn’t hard to prove the FSU’s commitment to the free speech of one side of the political or ideological spectrum: their site has a video testimonial from Conservative activist Darren Grimes explaining that the FSU helped when he was being investigated by the police for racist remarks historian David Starkey made on Grime’s show, and the FSU also features video interviews with historian and conspiracy theorist Neil Oliver, and ‘anti-woke’ writer Andrew Doyle, among many more. Toby Young even explained in the Spectator that the FSU believes “even Tommy Robinson has the right to protest”. Laudable stuff.

But what of the other side of the ideological spectrum? Where is the FSU’s non-partisan support for those who espouse views that aren’t ones shared by Young, Douglas Murray, Andrew Doyle et al? When an employment tribunal collapsed after members of the panel were found to have tweeted statements that were anti-Tory, the Free Speech Union… had no issue with the tribunal’s collapse. We can presumably surmise that free speech does not extend to using one’s personal time to make jokes about the Tory party. We may wonder how the non-partisan FSU would respond to someone being censured at work for tweets critical of the Labour or Green parties.

The FSU’s position on climate protesters has amounted to chastising them for acts of vandalism – concerns they apparently didn’t feel the need to express over protests from Tommy Robinson and his supporters.

Similarly, when plans were introduced to prevent workers for the Civil Service from wearing lanyards that showed their support for social movements, the FSU published two separate articles in support of the proposals, neither of which found much to criticise about a ban on expressing personal opinions in the workplace. Again, we may wonder how the FSU would have responded to a ban on wearing symbols of causes they happened to agree with.

The FSU’s positions are just as remarkable regarding the causes they decline to pass comment on. While Young is keen to highlight Tommy Robinson’s right to protest, he and the FSU have been oddly silent on whether Dr Sarah Benn has the right to peacefully protest against climate change without being suspended by the GMC, or whether Trudy Warner ought to have been threatened with jail for holding up a placard advising climate change protestors of their legal rights. The FSU’s position on climate protesters has amounted to chastising them for acts of vandalism – concerns they apparently didn’t feel the need to express over protests from Tommy Robinson and his supporters.

The freedom to be partisan

Just to be totally clear, I believe that the FSU has every right to only take an interest in cases they ideologically agree with and care about, and they’re also completely within their right to be silent about, or even actively condemn, free speech protests made by people or causes they disagree with. I believe they’re even allowed to do that while claiming to be non-partisan, though personally I’d prefer to see them be more honest with themselves about which causes are likely to move them to action.

I only raise these criticisms because, if you didn’t know much about the FSU or the organisations in their orbit, you might argue that, while you disagree with them about vaccine science or whether the climate is changing, you can respect the fact that they have a wholly and impartially committed view on free speech. My point is that, in my opinion, their defence of free speech is more conditional than they might recognise.

Personally, ideological hypocrisy is not the reason why I wouldn’t work with or endorse any project that involves Young or the FSU – for me, the red line is their associated contrarian positions on vaccines, Covid, and climate change. But for people who are willing to overlook those concerns in order to stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of free speech, that ideological hypocrisy ought to present an issue.

The risk here is that credible organisations that have worked hard to build a strong reputation for sound science, critical thinking, and open debate might end up lending some of their reputation and credibility to the FSU and, by extension, to organisations like the Daily Sceptic.

Those organisations have every right in the world to choose who they partner with and what events they run, but, by the same token, we have the right to point out where we think they’ve got something wrong and where we have concerns. Indeed, it is our freedom of speech to do so.

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